Everyone's school banned them because I'm just guessing there were local news reports about kids gambling with them and parents assumed it was going to lead to Satanism.
In my school we actually kinda did gamble with them, but very low drama so they never were banned. I liked them a lot, I was super into pokemon as a kid, despite not even having played the games.
I think i was the only one collecting them at my school, ate so many cheetos i got the whole collection on my own but Match Attax were big and got banned cos kids would steal them off each other
Did you ever play top trumps? Only card game we knew how to actually play other than uno. Although i mostly got them cos i liked looking at the pictures and reading the stats